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The final big winners at the Cannes Lions as adland honours a brilliant animation

The final Cannes Lions were handed out over the weekend with some familiar campaigns scooping the final Grand Prix gongs. Jonny Kelly’s brilliant animation for Chipotle (above) took the plaudits in both the Branded and Film categories – a perfect example of why brands should let brilliant creatives produce something tremendous and let the internet do the rest with it amassing 11 million Twitter impressions in nine days.

Widely-acclaimed ursine promo The Bear for Canal Plus added to its hefty accolades by taking Grand Prix for Film Craft while the Grand Prix for Good went to Droga5’s beautifully simple drive to target potential bone marrow donors through a branded bandage set.

So that’s Cannes over for another year and despite various misgivings surrounding the industry shindig it’s good to see some genuinely creative campaigns honoured.

You can see the first two round-ups of the Cannes Grand Prix winners here and here.

Grand Prix Film Craft Winner: The Bear

Grand Prix for Good winner: Help I Want to Save a Life

The Help I Want to Save a Life kit

Further reading:

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Rob Alderson

Editor-in-Chief Rob oversees editorial across all three It’s Nice That platforms; online, print and events. He has a background in newspaper journalism and a particular interest in art, advertising and photography. He is the main host of the Studio Audience podcast.

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Got the mid-week hump-day gloom, friend? Allow me to do away with it for you with a bumper-pack of animated GIFs by the talented hand of illustrator and animator Julian Glander. He once came up with a clever app which transformed colour data into sound for an eight-note synth and made us all into synaesthetes for a day, which was intricate and complicated enough to warrant a dose of fun to follow. A gang of tiny blob men whirling their arms over their heads at impossible speeds? Yes, please. A tiny man on a bicycle riding in tiny circles forevermore? Go on then. Great things are in the pipeline for this master of 3D shapes, bulgy eyeballs and jumping hamburgers. You mark our words.

When I sat down to write this article I was planning to discuss Ardéchoise illustrator Marion Fayolle’s impressive career to date; her numerous books for the likes of Nobrow and Magnani Editions; her editorial work for The New York Times, her textile designs for Cotélac and Kiblind and of course her very own illustration publication Nyctalope which she co-runs with Simon Roussin. And then I remembered she did a brilliant book of saucy drawings, Les Coquins, and decided to focus on that instead.

Good news everyone, you can now get access to the Printed Pages archive online! It’s been ages since we sold out of the last few copies of our first four issues and if we’re honest, we’ve been getting nostalgic for all those lovely articles we published way back in 2013. There was that interview with Sagmeister & Walsh when they’d only just made Jessica a partner, our racy chat with Dian Hanson about her career in pornographic magazines, the time we found out who put a massive crack down the middle of Tate Modern and our sunny visit to Geoff McFetridge’s LA studio.

FKA twigs has become the poster girl for everything that’s contemporary and cool. Her music is cutting edge, her style is unmatched and her videos always cause a stir. This new one is no different; directed by the artist herself in collaboration with Boots, Glass & Patron features a pregnant Twigs giving birth to a sea of colour in characteristically creepy settings. Cue a seriously heavy bassline, voguing in the woods and a cast of characters part human part cyborg who round things off nicely. If I’m honest the first minute or so almost lost my attention, but the rewards of the second half left me slack-jawed and wide-eyed. Now hold that pose for me…

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Prepare your mouse-clicking finger for what might be the best collaboration since Madonna, Britney and Christina Aguilera snogged live on stage – Google Maps has transformed into an interactive and completely playable version of Pac-Man, and it’s bloody brilliant. You can take the yellow-faced protagonist to your local high street, New York’s Time Square, or hop right over to Niagara Falls and run riot in those streets too. Basically, wherever Google can go, you can play.

So you know how we provide you with multiple hits of arts and design goodness week in week out and ask BASICALLY NOTHING in return? Well we’d be forever in your debt if you could spare five minutes to take part in our latest audience survey. We have some big plans for the next few months but we want to make sure that whatever we do is rooted in what our readers want and expect, and so we’re super-keen to hear your views.

Ricky Gervais is a figure who splits opinion and for every acolyte who hails him as the saviour of contemporary comedy, there’s plenty more who just can’t stand that laugh. I happen to be in the former camp and I am also a fan of postmodern advertising, so these new spots for Optus push pretty much all of my buttons. Commissioned to promote the Australian telecoms company bringing Netflix Down Under, Gervais is on typically obtuse form, whingeing about the expectations put on him, shamelessly plugging his own successes and revelling in his own unprofessionalism. Your views on Gervais will dictate your reaction to these, but if like me you enjoy his posturing then there’s plenty here to enjoy.

When I was 14 music merchandise was pretty much all I thought about. My rucksack was covered in patches emblazoned with band logos, my T-shirts were exclusively black and baggy, showing off my love for Nirvana, Mudvayne, Papa Roach and a whole heap of rap metal bands I’m frankly embarrassed by today, and I’d be up in Camden every weekend adding to my collection of Judas Priest weed grinders that I was never actually going to use. I was Simon Tam’s target audience.

Earlier this month we hosted an illuminating evening of talks themed around the “pursuit of brilliance” to mark the UK launch of the HTC One M9. The sold-out event saw digital pioneer Nicolas Roope, writer and architect Sam Jacob, body architect Lucy McRae and HTC Creative Director Daniel Hundt share their insights into how creative thinking can surpass the mundane and predictable to become something truly special.

Merging the fun of the playground with the beauty and cerebral qualities of art, a slide will transport visitors to the Hayward Gallery entrance this summer thanks to the forthcoming Carsten Höller show, Decision.

Somewhat lazily I’ve included an image in this post that concisely explains exactly what Moscow Sans is, who’s created it and why – which pretty much negates this whole piece of text. But in truth it was the best example of the typeface in use that I could find, hence its inclusion with the images below. Anyway, rather than repeating the sentiments of this text I’ll just say how excited I am to see Margaret Calvert lending her expertise to this project and reiterate a widely-held view that Henrik Kubel and Scott Williams are some of the finest typographic designers working today. Enjoy!

You’d struggle to make a big, bright, shiny Jeff Koons balloon dog anything but visually brilliant, but Parisian studio Artworklove has surely done more with it than most, making it the star of some beautifully designed invitations to the artist’s show at the Pompidou centre. The colours, the scale and the stock selected work together beautifully and make a nice introduction to what the studio’s been up to since we last posted about them in 2012, when we flagged up some great art direction using a nice Julia Roberts quip. Other cool noteworthy projects they’ve carried out of late include a great identity for French furniture and homeware site La Chance, which takes a simple icon and colour palette and twists the mark into something more dynamic.

Sometimes I don’t really “get” modern art, but I get Tracey Emin’s My Bed. She displayed it as a piece of art in 1998 after practically living in it for about a month following a bad breakup. Back then she was rake-thin and impish with an appetite for booze and fags, in that odd age where you’re left to fend for yourself but are not perhaps quite ready.

Idyllic mountainous landscapes are fine and funny domestic settings are good too, but it’s not often we see illustrators tackle the subject of intricately designed custom weaponry. We appreciate Joe Melhuish’s new project all the more for its originality. He first started drawing bizarre pockets knives that look more like the jumbo Super Soakers while researching for a commission for “quite a big pop musician,” and soon became fascinated in the way weapons might grow to become an accessory to one’s identity.

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He may not grace the covers of magazines or the red carpet, but designer Simon Whybray is more famous than you think. When you’re lurking about on the internet and being entertained by seriously cool and interesting stuff – do you ever stop and think, who the hell made this? Well, occasionally, it’s Simon. Designer by day, Tumblr scroller by night, Simon spends most of his time tucked up in his bedroom overlooking Old Street on his laptop. Sound lazy? It isn’t. He’s busy creating products, GIFs, designs, logos, club nights, clothing, memes, typefaces, music…you name it. Being on the internet all day has fed Simon’s brain like a drip, and subsequently he’s now asked by big brands to come in and teach them what the hell is going on out there in the real – well, online – world.

In response to a “critical graphic design” brief from their tutor at Central Saint Martins, graphic design students Ellen Mercer and Lucy Streule spliced together a tonne of clips and heartfelt scenes where movie characters let each other know, “FYI I’m a graphic designer.”

Public art project London is Changing makes Londoners uncomfortably aware of the truths we’re perhaps trying to ignore: that our city is morphing beyond recognition, that creativity is at risk, and that for many people, it’s simply becoming unaffordable.

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Turns out even Prince Charles and Camilla are prone to some Royal cock-ups on Mother’s Day, if a new ad for The Body Shop is to be believed. The brilliant spot by Mr President and Alison Jackson shows Charlie and Cam struggling, as many of us do, to make the morning just perfect for Her Majesty, burning the toast, making a shambles of Sellotaping gifts and goofing around washing the corgis. Where they do succeed, however, is in making the boiled eggs into very British little soldiers. It’s a really clever campaign – sweet, funny, brilliantly written and replete with Harry dashing down the stairs clutching champagne, wearing nothing but his pants (Union Jack-patterned, of course.) And if you want some tips from the hapless pair before this Sunday, there are six additional films showing the prep in more detail, including “How to blow-dry a corgi” and “How to make a breakfast fit for a queen.” Great work, Alison!

When an insurance company challenges you to not skip through their latest ad on YouTube, your first reaction is likely to be “try me.” But you know what? They have actually pulled something pretty remarkable together for their latest advert. Well, I say remarkable, it’s pretty low-budget, but the idea behind it is great. Knowing that the majority of people wouldn’t watch an insurance ad on YouTube unless you were holding a gun to their head, they made their advert two seconds long. Then if like me you enjoy the first two seconds, you can stay for the whole thing. Best thing about this ad is how they didn’t even green screen the family, and you can see them wigging out and twitching as that dog goes all Beethoven on their dinner. Well done The Martin Agency for keeping us on our toes.

When I think of major league sports brands the name Umbro doesn’t come to mind – sorry lads. That’s probably because they’re comparatively small, British and their logo’s not as cool as the Nike swoosh or whatever that adidas thing is (again, sorry). But Umbro’s latest ad is making me think I’ve got them all wrong; that they’re capable of trouncing the major players when it comes to their advertising budget.

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